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30 Years of Junk Science, from SDI to Fracking

How politics and ideology combat scientific innovations and economic development
By Kevin Mooney

Summary: The politicization of science, and leftists use of pseudoscience, can be traced back many decades , notably to the Lefts false attacks 30 years ago on President Reagans Strategic Defense Initiative. Today, politicized science and anti-American ideology combine to frustrate natural gas development and other innovations that could help the nation be stronger and more secure. The biggest losers include average Americans who would benefit directly from fracking.

ould you like to build a pipeline that would extend from a safe, friendly region of world to parts of rural America in need of jobs? Or use innovative drilling techniques to free natural gas that was previously inaccessible? Or apply high-tech agriculture to arid, semi-desert regions in order to boost living standards? Try advancing any of these policy aims and you can expect to run into green roadblocks. Almost any policy that advances Americas geopolitical political interests and economic well-being is now attacked as inconsistent with protecting the environment. Consider the case of farmers, business owners, and other average citizens living in the Marcellus Shale region that includes the Southern Tier and Finger Lakes regions of New York, northern and western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, western Maryland, and much of West Virginia and western Virginia.

1983: President Reagan announces plans to develop a missile defense system. 2012: The so-called Union of Concerned Scientists attacks journalists over global warming.

Theyre sitting atop untold wealth natural gas resources that could give the U.S. clean, cheap energyyet standing in their way are elite environmentalists who twist science to stop development of these abundant resources. Today, the process of hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) is under a moratorium in New York and could potentially be derailed or slowed in Pennsylvania, thanks to a pressure campaign fueled by junk science. Its a process that can be traced back decades, and that includes, of all things, President Rea-

gans proposal to build a shield against nuclear missiles. Cuomos moratorium More on missile defense later. First, heres what happening in New York

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30 Years of Junk Science Page 1 Green Notes Page 8

with regard to fracking. Until a few months ago, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) appeared set to delegate decisions on fracking to localities. But after missing a February 27 deadline to finalize regulations for that process, Cuomo declared that the states health commissioner, Nirav Shah, should not be rushed into making a decision. Shah has been studying the potential impact fracking might have on human health since last September. People say you should rush; Im not going to rush anyone, Cuomo said during a press conference. If the health commissioner says he needs more time to come to an intelligent conclusion, then he needs more time to come to an intelligent conclusion. Financially, the decision should be easy. New Yorks budget deficit hovers around $8 billion, and several recent studies, including one from University of Wyoming economist Timothy Considine, concluded that fracking would yield $1.7 billion in additional economic activity and $214 million in extra tax revenue in 2015. Between 2011 and 2020, New York could gain $11.4 billion in economic output and $1.4 billion in tax revenues. The example set by neighboring Pennsylvania creates political challenges for
Editor: Steven J. Allen Publisher: Terrence Scanlon Address: 1513 16th Street, NW Washington, DC 20036-1480 Phone: (202) 483-6900 E-mail: sallen@CapitalResearch.org Website: www.CapitalResearch.org Green Watch is published by Capital Research Center, a non-partisan education and research organization classified by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) public charity. Reprints are available for $2.50 prepaid to Capital Research Center. Page 2

Gov. Cuomo. Almost 239,000 direct and indirect jobs across Pennsylvania are supported by the natural gas industry, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. A recent study projects that by 2020 the state could supply a quarter of the nations natural gas. The authors, who are connected with Penn States Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering, wrote: Our estimates suggest that in 2020 the Marcellus industry in Pennsylvania could be creating more than $20 billion in value added, generating $2 billion in state and local tax revenues, and supporting more than 250,000 jobs. So whats the hold-up in New York? Politics, environmental pressure groups, and junk science. Last summer, New York Residents Against Drilling and other green groups sent a letter to Gov. Cuomos top 1,000 individual donors, urging them to exert pressure on the governor. It appears to have worked. Cuomo earned praise from his former brother-in-law Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who now heads up a green group known as the Waterkeeper Alliance. I was impressed that they werent just holding their finger up and looking at the political winds and which way the political winds were blowing, but they were actually reading science, Kennedy said. With regard to fracking, Tom Shepstone, the campaign director for the Northeast Marcellus Initiative (NMI), an industry-supported group, points out that there are a few wealthy families in upstate New York with strong political connections who are looking to keep the state impoverished without any development, for selfish reasons. Shepstone identified wealthy residents of Livingstone Manor in Sullivan County, which is home to Rockefeller family members, along with such notables as former CBS anchorman Dan Rather and Ramsay
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Adams, founder and executive director of Catskill Mountainkeeper. Ramsay is often quoted as a spokesman for antifrackers, claiming falsely that fracking is unsafe. (By the way, his father, John Adams, is co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which helped lead the fight during the Cold War to deny reports of Soviet clients using chemical-biological weapons to commit genocide in Laos.) Cuomo does the bidding of wellfunded, politically connected activists. Its difficult to overstate their influence. When a few small towns in the northern region of the Delaware River Basin (DRB) passed a pro-natural gas resolution, they ran into stiff opposition from the NRDC. The Town of Sanford in Broome County and the Towns of Delaware and Fremont in Sullivan County each have a budget of just a few million dollars. By comparison, the NRDC spent over $105 million in 2011 and has almost $200 million in net assets. It also has 350 lawyers, scientists, and other professionals at its beck and call. Thats what you call a lopsided fight. Meanwhile, the Sierra Club has launched a new campaign called Beyond Natural Gas. In an interview with the National Journal, the groups executive director, Michael Brune, said, Were going to be preventing new gas plants from being built wherever we can. A Sierra Club website declares: The natural gas industry is dirty, dangerous and running amok and The closer we look at natural gas, the dirtier it appears; and the less of it we burn, the better off we will be. For now, it appears that a plurality of Americans supports fracking even in New York. A Quinnipiac University poll in December 2012 found that by 44 to 42 percent New Yorkers believe the economic advantages of hydraulic fracturing outweigh any potential enApril 2013

vironmental side effects. But the profracking side is not as well-funded and as well-organized as the anti-frackers. When two sides in a controversy are closely matched, the side thats better funded and organized usually wins. Cornell University has received $208,000 to fund studies that are set up to cast hydraulic fracturing in a bad light. The source of that money is the Park Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit donor based in Ithaca, N.Y., which also funds environmentalist groups opposed to natural gas development. So far, the Park Foundation is receiving a substantial return on its investment: Its Cornell studies, which are almost always accepted uncritically by the media and policymakers, have played a major role in blocking fracking in New York. Jon Entine, a senior fellow at the Center for Health & Risk Communications at George Mason University, reports frequently on anti-shale findings that have been challenged and debunked by well-credentialed scientists and researchers. In his columns, he identifies Cornell University as ground-zero for the scientific distortions that have penetrated public consciousness. Entine has identified Robert Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology, as the central player at Cornell. Howarth claims that shale gas unleashes more greenhouse gas emissions than coal does. Beginning in spring 2011, his conclusions received extensive coverage in the New York Times and in publications overseas. But the idea that greenhouse emissions from shale gas exceed those from coal is dead wrong, according to independent researchers. Even some of his own Cornell colleagues, such as Lawrence Cathles, a professor in the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department, have vigorously challenged the anti-shale conclusions. (Cathles: Natural gas is widely considered to be an environmentally cleaner
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Why scientist-activists believe stupid things

by Steven J. Allen
When scientists become political activists, they almost always take positions that are later revealed to be foolish, even dangerous. Why? A clue might be found in the work of James Randi, the magician known as The Amazing Randi. Randi has made a second career out of exposing con men who make claims of the paranormal, such as Uri Geller, whose mystic powers (such as bending spoons with his mind) were supposedly confirmed by a number of scientists. Scientists, Randi wrote, think logically, from a cause-and-effect paradigm. A trickster supplies all the misdirection, the elements expected by logical inference, the necessary aspects that identify a situation as normalthen he uses a different approach, a set of actions, a scenario that leads the dupe to accept that the expected situation is being fulfilledbut its not. The scientists conclusion is that naturewhich he knows does not change the rules to deceivehas been abrogated in some way. In other words, its magic. The conjuror or con man is a very good provider of information. He supplies lots of data, by inference or direct statement, but its false data. Scientists arent used to that scenario. An electron or a galaxy is not capricious, nor deceptive; a human can be either or both. Scientists, Randi asserted, are far easier to fool than other people because they assume that someone not thinking logically, cannot deceive them because hes not their intellectual equal. They think theyre smarter than the con man, not recognizing that such deception is the strength of the con man, his only profession. Throughout the past century, scientists fell for one con after another, from white supremacy to eugenics, from scientific socialism to the population bomb, from phrenology (judging personality, including intelligence and criminal proclivities, based on the shape of a persons head) to catastrophic man-made global warming. Proponents of Nazism and Communism, which killed hundreds of millions of people, claimed that their beliefs were rooted in science. Because of scientist-activists long record as enablers of evil men, policymakers have a special responsibility to examine carefully any issue in which science plays a significant role, to ensure that the scientific advice they receive is not biased by ideology or by any effort to promote a political agendaor, if unbiased advice is not available, to ensure that all sides in a debate are considered before important decisions are made. Dr. Steven J. Allen (JD, PhD) Trofim Lysenko (left) was director of biology under is editor of Green Watch.
Stalin (right). His theories led to mass starvation.

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fuel than coal because it does not produce detrimental by-products such as sulfur, mercury, ash and particulates and because it provides twice the energy per unit of weight with half the carbon footprint during combustion. These points are not in dispute.) Researchers with the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the U.S. Energy Department have slammed Howarths conclusions, Entine noted in a column for Forbes. Within the field, Howarth is considered an activist, not an independent scientist, Entine observed. But youd never know that reading the Times fracking coverage. Even Arthur Brisbane, then the newspapers public editor, scored the Times for its biased reporting on fracking. From a scientific perspective, no reason exists to even suspect unknown health or environmental issues will turn up because hydraulic fracturing is not a new technology, Entine explained. It has been perfected over decades and tweaked in recent years to horizontally access deeply buried shale gas. The fracking process begins with the creation of water pressure mixed with a small fraction of chemicals pumped into wells at least 3,000 feet below the surface, which is far below the water table. This mix of soapy water creates fractures in the rock that allow the oil and natural gas to escape so it can flow out of the well. Entine asked, When will we see [in the Times] the investigative piece airing the dirty linen that led to Howarths rigged study, including the funding stream from the Park Foundation, which yearly gives millions of dollars to media organizations and community groups targeted specifically to undermine Americas goal to reach a balanced energy future?
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In the past, some environmentalists supported the development of natural gas, which, by their own standards, is far cleaner than other hydrocarbon energy sources, cleaner even than some green technology such as electric cars (which, at this point, are charged with electricity generated mostly from coal). Now, however, the environmental movement is vehemently anti-natural gas. Why? For one thing, the movement has invested a good deal of political capitaland economic capital from taxpayersinto so-called renewable technology that could be abandoned as fracking gains acceptance. If, in decades to come, the fracking revolution continues to bring down the price of mainstream energy, that will eliminate any hope that highly expensive forms of energy such as wind and solar can be made economically viable. And theres another reason for environmentalists opposition to fracking. You might call it patriotism-in-reverse. U.S.A. Number OneNot I see tremendous geopolitical ramifications flowing from the natural gas revolution that will be enormously beneficial to the United States and to other democracies, Shepstone said. But there are a lot of people out there, including many Americans, who do not want us to be Number One. These are the intellectuals who hold a European view of American power. They view America as the cowboy. They are very pampered insulated people who dont really understand the world. European-style pseudo-intellectuals dont want the U.S. to succeedsomething they have in common with, for example, the United Arab Emirates and Russia. The recent Matt Damon film Promised Land told the clichd story of an evil fracking company trying to get rich by bamboozling nave locals until, one
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day, a company man has a change of heart and becomes a whistleblower. It was, in essence, a fictionalized version of the pseudo-documentary Gasland, the anti-fracking film that won a 2011 Emmy for documentary direction and an Oscar nomination for best documentary. Damons movie, it turned out, was financed in part by the United Arab Emirates, which has a strong interest in keeping America dependent on Middle Eastern oil. (The revelation about the UAEs role in financing Promised Land came soon after the news that former Vice President Al Gore received, for his share of the network Current TV, $100 million from Al Jazeera, a TV network created by the government of Qatar.) Some have suggested the Russian government might be involved in the anti-fracking campaign in the U.S. It would be surprising if it were not, given the track record of Russia and the old Soviet Union for covert interference in the internal affairs of other countries. Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, formerly of the KGB, is a proponent of the concept of national championsof the government and major corporations acting hand-in-glove. This idea, also known as public-private partnership, crony capitalism, or fascism, has enabled well-connected Russians to become billionaires in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Empire. The company Gazrom (Gazovaya Promyshlennost, or Gas Industry) was created when the Soviet Unions Ministry of Gas Industry was privatized and ended up in the hands of members of the political elite and, mostly, the Russian government. Today, its the worlds largest extractor of natural gas, and the dependency on Russian gas of much of Europe is critical to Russia in terms of both wealth and power. So Putin and the Russian ruling class have a compelling interest in blocking the development of natural gas resources in the U.S.
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Bonner Cohen, a senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR), has a keen understanding of the history. After World War II, the United States sought the economic recovery of Europe through what came to be known as the Marshall Plan, he said. It was offered not only to Western Europe, but to Eastern Europe, then under Soviet occupation, and to the USSR. Joseph Stalins Kremlin vetoed the communist blocks participation in the Marshall Plan, thereby denying tens of millions of Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, East Germans, Russians, Ukrainians, and other people under Soviet control the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of post-war recovery. Cohen notes that, Today, Vladimir Putins Russia is funding an anti-shalegas PR campaign throughout Europe, including in countries like Poland and Bulgaria, both with shale deposits, that are former Soviet satellites. The Kremlin wants to maintain its near monopoly on natural gas sales to Europe and seeks to squelch any competition emanating from shale gas formations in Europe. The Russian-funded anti-fracking campaign in Europe echoes the disinformation spread by environmentalists in the U.S. and elsewhere. Regardless of whether they fund any particular campaign directly, the Russians have always been able to find ivory-tower academics willing to side with them in any dispute with the West, especially with the U.S. From bogus allegations of U.S. biological warfare in Korea, to the cover-up of the Soviets own biological warfare program and of the use of chemical weapons against the Hmong people of Southeast Asia; from the fake statistics used to stop atmospheric nuclear testing, to the nuclear winter hoax, to claims that missile defense is impossiblewhenever the Russians/Soviets have needed support from academic experts, they
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have received it. Fracking is just the latest example of academic foolishness that plays into the hands of anti-U.S. interests. Academics vs. science Jim Holstun, an English professor at the University at Buffalo The State University of New York (known as SUNY Buffalo), appears to be part of that process. Holstun is part of a group formed last year called the University at Buffalo Coalition for Leading Ethically in Academic Research. He helped lead a successful effort to shut down the Shale Resources and Society Institute at the university. After the university issued a report that concluded

shale drilling was, in fact, safe, Holstun claimed the report was biased in favor of industry. In a letter to the campus last year, SUNY President Satish K. Tripathi explained that it became necessary to shut down the Institute since it lacked a sufficient faculty presence. He had received a petition signed by over 10,000 professors, students, and some SUNY trustees opposed to the Institute. The people who signed the petition feel that their public university needs to remain a public university and not a mouthpiece for corporations, Holstun told the New York Times. The reporting from the Institute reflected the inter-

Flammable water? The truth is irrelevant

The movie FrackNation closely examines the rhetoric and factual claims made by anti-drilling activists, particularly that of a left-wing filmmaker, Josh Fox, as expressed in his 2010 documentary Gasland. Once again, the Park Foundation figures into the equation: it donated $75,000 to Foxs production company to fund a promotional campaign for Gasland. The husband-wife team of Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney collaborated together on FrackNation to expose the junk science underpinning the propaganda funded in part by the Park Foundation. A key moment in Gasland comes when activists dramatize their case against scientific progress by lighting water on fire and then falsely blaming fracking for the blaze. During a press conference held in Chicago after a screening of Gasland, McAleer challenged Fox on the facts standing behind the flammable water he highlighted in his film, which focused on households in Colorado. McAleer called attention to a 1976 study by the Colorado Division of Water found the area in question already had gas in the water and that it was the result of natural forces. The report concluded that troublesome amounts of methane had been in the water for decades before fracking began. Dont you owe a journalistic duty to show there was a problem with gas in the water before fracking started? McAleer asked. Most people watching your film would think lighting your water started with fracking. You said yourself people lit their water long before fracking started, isnt that correct? When pressed, Fox acknowledged this was true, but that it was also irrelevant.KM
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ests of gas companies, and not serious scholarship. Although seed money for the Institute was taken from the colleges discretionary budget, the Institute did seek out support from the oil and gas industry later, and the authors of the pro-drilling study do have connections to the oil and gas industry. To Holstun and others like him, any effort that is funded and supported by American industry is illegitimate. Of course, real science is based on replicable experimentation and observation. The foundation of science is that others can repeat a study and see if they get the same results. In real science, the bias of the scientist shouldnt matter, as long as other scientists can replicate research, compare the findings, and settle differences through vigorous debate. In that context, whether a scientist has received grants or consulting fees from gas companies, tobacco companies, the former KGB, or the devil himself shouldnt matter, as long as his or her numbers hold up to scrutiny. Yet leftwing academics are quick to engage in ad hominem attacks on any scientist or researcher who comes to a conclusion that runs counter to the agenda of the Left. Dennis Holbrook, an attorney with Norse Energy, added some much needed perspective when he was questioned by Holstun in Buffalo during a screening of Truthland, a film that examines and debunks the alarmist claims in Gasland. Questioning Holbrook, Holstun attacked the relationship between Norse Energy and the University of Buffalo. Holbrook was having none of it. Since there is a natural tendency out there to be skeptical of industry, he said, Norse Energy felt it important to give academia an opportunity to have the facts and to reach conclusions that would be able to instill greater confidence in the public.... Einstein could be up here discussing the theories of
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relativity, and there are those of you, if sterilizing chemicals in the water suphe was up here sponsored by industry ply only if that could be accomplished would be questioning him. without affecting members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, Professor Holstun certainly has his own or livestock.) biases. On his website, he declares: My work is Marxist, and I think Marx- Then theres the so-called Union of ist theory and political practice are Concerned Scientists (UCS), which is more relevant now than ever, given the often quoted by the media as if it were global dominance of the capitalist mode a scientific, rather than political, orgaof production and American imperial- nization. For one thing, UCS is in no ism. During the last decade or so, Ive sense an organization of scientists. Anymoved from a new historicist approach one willing to charge $35 on a credit based in post-structuralist theory to a card can join. One intrepid researcher Marxist history-from-below approach even signed up his dog to drive the based in the British Marxist historians, point home. The dog, Kenji, received Jean-Paul Sartre, and Ernst Bloch, a welcome kit and a signed letter from among others. This approach argues UCS President Kevin Knobloch. that theoretical consciousness is by no UCS was founded at the Massachumeans the monopoly of professors, but setts Institute of Technology as an is to be found at work in human activoutgrowth of the so-called March 4th ity as such, even (or especially) among Movement, which sought to prevent exploited workers. academics and scientists from working Politicized-science extremists on classified research or on any form of Holstun is part of a long, sorry tradi- research for the U.S. government. On tion of the politicization of science. For March 4, 1969, students and professors example, as Green Watch editor Steven at MIT organized what they termed a J. Allen has reported, the top U.S. Research Stoppage demonstration, scientific organization, the American expressing concern over the dangerAssociation for the Advancement of ous usage of research and scientific Science (AAAS), had a longtime rela- technologiesdangerous, that is, if tionship as a sister organization with those technologies are in the hands of the American Association of Scientific the U.S. government. Workers (AASW), a Soviet front group Since 1969, UCS has stood at the forethat, during the time of the Hitler-Stalin front of the politicization of science. alliance, backed Hitler and opposed aid In 1983, President Reagan proposed to Great Britain. Dr. Allen has identified the missile defense program known as seven presidents of AAAS from the pethe Strategic Defense Initiative. Critics riod 1931-1951 who were also members ridiculed SDI as Star Wars, and UCS of the Soviet-front AASW, including issued a report by astronomer and TV three men who served as presidents of personality Carl Sagan and several both organizations. MIT professors that purported to prove AAAS is highly influential. The current missile defense was unworkable and science advisor to President Obama is a would destabilize the world, perhaps former AAAS president, John Holdren, leading to nuclear war. (In 1984, Sagan a Global Warming activist who wrote and other prominent scientists-activists favorably in a 1977 book about such signed a newspaper ad describing Presimethods of population control as dent Reagan as the performing star forced abortions and involuntary ster- of Far-Rightists. Reagan, they said, ilization. (He suggested, though, that was a man whose campaign exuded a the government could legitimately put scent of fascism in the air.) UCS charGreen Watch April 2013

acterized missile defense as a virtual impossibility, akin to hitting a bullet with a bullet. SDI is another wonder weapon, declared Dr. Henry Kendall of UCS, and its benefits are an illusion. It should be stopped. As noted by the late Robert Jastrow, a Dartmouth University physics professor who also worked for NASA, UCS and other SDI opponents misled the press and the public by greatly exaggerating the number of orbiting satellites that would be required for such a defense. The UCS report concluded that 2,400 satellites would be required for a ballistic-missile defense. But later in congressional testimony, a representative lowered the organizations estimate to 800. The revisions didnt stop there. The group later reduced the figure further to 300, then to 162. Oops. UCSs claims that the available computing power would be insufficient to support a missile defense system proved equally foolish. Computers today are roughly half a million times as powerful as those that existed at the time of President Reagans proposal, a development that was entirely foreseeable. Of course, the idea that missile defense is impossible has gone into the dustbin of history next to New York Times predictions that it would take a million years for man to achieve powered flight and that space rockets would never work because they wouldnt have air to push against. No one today doubts that missile defense will be a major factor in the future of national security. The threat (to aggressors) of a missile shield in Europe was real enough that President Obama surrendered it as part of his reset of relations with Putin and the Russians, double-crossing our Polish and Czech allies in the process. Israels Iron Dome missile defense, which was used recently to stop Hamas rocket attacks, has been described as a game changer. And in response to reports on the progress of North Koreas
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ballistic nuclear missile program, the U.S. is now deploying missile defenses in Alaska that President Obama had previously blocked. In the decades since the SDI proposal, UCS continued its war on science. Notably, in 1992, the group put together a World Scientists Warning to Humanity that combined doomsday demagoguery with pseudoscience. In apocalyptic terms, the statement invoked such then-fashionable dangers to humanity as ozone depletion, acid rain, and the irreversible loss of species, which by 2100 may reach one-third of all species now living. In a manner reminiscent of the eugenicists of the 1920s and 30s, the UCS statement declared that we face unrestrained population growth and warned that, If we are to halt the destruction of our environment, we must accept limits to that growth. The UCS added that humanitys survival depends on foreign aid, sexual equality, and abortion. We the undersigned, senior members of the worlds scientific community, hereby warn all humanity of what lies ahead. The UCS Warning to Humanity statement is comical, worthy of publication in the satirical newspaper The Onion, but its real. Ikes second warning In his farewell address to the nation the same speech in which he spoke of a military-industrial complexPresident Eisenhower issued another warning, about a scientific-technological elite:
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually

a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nations scholars by federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever presentand is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

In the 52 years since Eisenhowers address, the term military-industrial complex has become part of the standard language of politics. Hardly anyone knows that he also warned us about the scientific-technological elite. Given the great influence of highly partisan, often radical scientistactivists on the national debate, its time for Americans to pay attention to Eisenhowers second warning.
Kevin Mooney is an investigative reporter for several Washington-based publications and for The Pelican Institute.

GW
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GreenNotes
Gina McCarthy, a former top aide to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, is President Obamas choice to succeed Jackson. McCarthy is the architect of some of the agencys most destructive carbon rules, the Wall Street Journal editorialized, and her appointment is a sign Obama intends to make good on his vow of executive actions if Congress doesnt pass cap and tax. Also a former environmental advisor to Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.), McCarthy is likely to impose restrictions on fracking, justified by the supposed problem of methane leaks. Among the policies promoted by McCarthy: a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants and rules that shut down older plants and force utilitiesultimately, ratepayersto spend billions on upgrading newer plants. Most likely, McCarthy will push new rules that limit existing plants to a certain amount of CO2-per-kilowatt-hour and then ratchet that limit down over time. According to the Journal, if EPA adopts rules favored by environmentalists, utilities that phase out their coal operations early would generate credits they could sell to other operators to keep their coal plants running longer. In other words, EPA will create cap-and-trade, an idea so unpopular that Democrats couldnt pass it when they controlled the White House and the U.S. House and had a Senate supermajority. That kind of cap-and-trade regime will devastate states that produce coal or rely on coal-fired plants, which is one reason science, and the Lefts wild-eyed opposition to it, may play a role in this years race for Virginias governor. The Republican nominee, state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, gives the Global Warming crowd fits. Coral Davenport of the National Journal calls him an unapologetically partisan firebrand who has drawn the national spotlight for his crusade against the science of climate change. As attorney general, Cuccinelli sued to expose the use of state funds by Warmers (including a major player in the Climategate scandal) and to stop the EPA from pretending carbon dioxide is pollution in order to impose draconian regulations on the U.S. economy. Cuccinelli is one of the most high-profile deniers in the country, said Navin Nayak of the League of Conservation Voters. People in D.C. will feel the ripple effects of this race, and we want to make sure they see being a climate denier is really bad politics. Craig Rosebraugh is a former spokesman for the radical Earth Liberation Front once injured while protesting in support of convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. Now he has a new movie supposedly filmed in 14 countries: Greedy Lying Bastards, the story of efforts to deny Global Warming theory. Rosebraugh told Politico: I dont think we could have asked for a better time to release the film because thankfullyif you can call it thankfullythe climate has responded with the severe weather patterns in 2011 and 2012. We had the severe droughts, we had the wildfires, and, of course, Hurricane Sandy this year. And that really turned the tide on public opinion. In fact, droughts and wildfires are at or below historical levels, and Sandy wasnt even a hurricane when it hit land. The storms severe damage was caused by its hitting at high tide, by governments encouraging people to build in flood-prone areas, and by politicians who, for decades, ignored warnings to build floodwalls and otherwise prepare. Politicians claimed Sandy was a superstorm, a better label than a more-powerful-than-usual storm that happened to hit at a bad time and place and for which incompetent politicians had neglected to prepare. Often, they called it Hurricane Sandy, but when it came to insurance coverage, politicians sang a different tune. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and others pressured the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and insurance companies not to classify Sandy as a hurricanebecause that would have boosted deductibles to $20,000 from the $1,000 level for a tropical storm. The National Taxpayers Union calculates that the anti-climate change measures proposed by the President in his State of the Union message would cost taxpayers an additional $56.4 billion a yearabout $710 a year for a typical family of four. Meanwhile, a Rasmussen poll of likely voters found that respondents, by 66% to 23%, prefer creating jobs to taking steps to stop global warming.

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